ARTICLE: ENCOUNTERS IN THE THIRD DIMENSION WITH nEoPOL

3D is back. Ever since its earliest incarnations back in the 1920’s with the 1922 silent flick, “Power Of Love”, venturing into the third dimension has been tricky, and far from as crowd pleasing as many would like.

The 1950’s become the format’s “Golden Era” and the 3D genre moved away from Anaglyph RED/CYAN glasses into the more colour friendly, Polarised.

The ’80’s saw a revival in the format with films such as “Jaws 3-D” and “Friday The 13th 3-D” etc… But it was IMAX in 1985 where a more subtle and steady progression began. The Film was “We Are Born Of Stars” and this would be the first of many IMAX large format nonfiction 3D presentations to thrill audiences for the next 25 years.

On DVD, Polarised is not a viable method, leaving Anaglyph to try and fill the void, while Field Sequential Shutter Glasses technology has been the most effective. The major problem is, that Field Sequential only works with CRT or DLP projection or monitors, and there are many like my self, who use LCD, with works via a different method, leaving the benefits of Shutter Glasses to be null and void.

Anaglyph it is then.

My collection of 3D is small, but growing and is more of a collectors interest, than a viable alternative to 2D cinema, but it can look good, and at times, stunning.

I use three formats, including Anaglyph RED/CYAN, Anaglyph MAGENTA/GREEN, ColorCode 3D with uses AMBER/BLUE.

ColorCode 3D is the format with is favoured by TV broadcasters in recent years, but it was pioneered back in the early years of the 2000’s with two IMAX films on DVD, “Haunted Castle” and “Encounter In The Third Dimension”

“HAUNTED CASTLE” 2001 (ColorCode 3D)

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“Ghosts Of The Abyss” was James Cameron’s first film since “Titanic” and looked spectacular in IMAX‘s polarised 3D, but was presented in 2D in the Western DVD editions. The still below is from a YouTube version, which I believe to be the Eastern edition, which employed the rarely used Yellow/Blue system. Whether or not this is in fact ColorCode 3D is not yet clear. This DVD is seriously rare and is now out of print.

“GHOSTS OF THE ABYSS” 2003

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In feature films, the last three years has been productive. Besides “Avatar”, which will not be making a 3D appearance anytime soon, several have made their way on to DVD and Blu Ray. The following three films have been released in Anaglyph MAGENTA/GREEN 3D.